Steve Jobs, the hero from Silicon Valley, died at the age of 56 years of pancreatic cancer. Passionate, brilliant and irreplaceable in the consciousness of fans and investors, co-founder of Apple dared to defy the rules and to revolutionize an entire industry.

Apple announced that Dr. Ronald D. Sugar, former Chairman of the Board and CEO of Northrop Grumman Corporation, was appointed to Apple’s Board of Directors. He will serve as the Chair of the Audit and Finance Committee.

Verizon Wireless President and CEO Lowell C. McAdam has been named president and chief operating officer of Verizon Communications, reporting to Chairman and CEO Ivan G. Seidenberg, effective Oct. 1, 2010.

Robert Dotson, president and CEO of T-Mobile USA, has informed that he plans to leave the company in May 2011, after 15 years of service with T-Mobile. His designated successor is Philipp Humm, an experienced DT executive and former CEO of T-Mobile Deutschland.

The SIP Forum, an IP communications industry association that engages in numerous activities that promote and advance SIP-based technology, has announced the recent re-election of industry veteran and VoIP pioneer Richard Shockey to the Board of Directors, and the election of Shockey as new Board Chairman.

Richard Shockey, founder of Shockey Consulting, is an industry veteran with a decades-long and distinguished track record in helping shape numerous technical standards that have become the foundation for today’s SIP-based next generation network infrastructure and application ecosystem.

Skype today announced that it has hired David Gurle as the new General Manager and Vice President of its Skype for Business unit. He replaces Stefan Oberg, who will be leaving Skype in March 2010.

"Moving forward, our goal is to educate and attract larger organizations that can not only save money by using Skype to communicate, but also increase their organizational productivity and enhance the way they interact with customers around the globe," said David Gurle.

The increasing popularity of SSD is challenging DBAs to adapt their database performance tuning methodologies in order to optimize application performance and return on investment.

The book from Mike Ault shows how to accelerate Oracle databases and target solid state disk for maximum benefit.

Mike Ault is an Oracle expert and a prolific author, who has published more than twenty Oracle-related books. He was an Oracle database specialist at Quest Software and has has five Oracle Masters Certificates and more than 17 years of experience as an Oracle DBA and consultant.

Tadiran Telecom has signed a distribution agreement with Teledata Technologies in a collaboration aimed at targeting "vast" VoIP opportunities in the African telecom market.
The IP business telephony and communications supplier has also announced the appointment of Zeev Aviv as acting President and CEO. Until recently, he served as VP Sales and Marketing.